The green switch: designing for sustainability in mobile computing

• Authors: Galit Zadok;Riikka Puustinen
• Venue: SustainIT'10 Proceedings of the First USENIX conference on Sustainable information technology
• Year: 2010

Growth of mobile users is projected to reach 6 billion by 2013, with 80% of users in the developing world where the mobile phone is their primary communication and computing device. At the same time, sales of energy-intensive Smart Phones have grown 15% last year with all mobile phones to be Smart by 2015. The increased consumption means an average replacement rate of 18 months, accounting for 500 million handsets replaced last year in Europe alone. This makes the mobile phone the consumer electronic device with the highest replacement rate in history. These parallel and growing trends make sustainability in mobile computing an urgent problem to address. In addressing sustainability, solutions with a significant impact that actively reduce emissions are required. Such efforts within the mobile industry are underway in the manufacturing and disposal phases. However, sustainability efforts in the product use-phase have been limited. Efforts have largely focused on the ecological appeal, neglecting to address the human or user appeal that is required to instigate behavioural change on a mass-market level. To redress this issue, this position paper outlines a product and service design methodology called The Green Switch. The methodology is structured as a human and ecological check-list that creates a framework by which one can assess the likely mass-market take-up and therefore the positive environmental impact of a mobile product or service. In addition, the paper introduces an early-stage design concept called the Green Mode App, as an example of a mobile product which adheres to The Green Switch methodology.